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Netropolitan – Fakers

AND where there are forgers, there are likely to be fakers. The Net recently saw what may count as the first piece of electronic panhandling from Theo Chino, who had accounts at both Netcom and another system based in Alaska.

He claimed, in a message sent to thousands of newsgroups, to be one of “the Cyberspace Homeless” and feared that he was going to lose his Internet connections. His World Wide Web page catalogued his sad life story. A blizzard of e-mail to his system administrator followed. As people pointed out, you have to be doing fairly well to have two Net accounts, including a Web page.

Netropolitan’s most recent search failed to track Chino down – it looks like he may have been cut off after all.